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Vancouver Whitecaps fail to make an impact

Author of the article:

Russell Berrisford

Publishing date:

March 7, 2016 • 3 minute read

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So for the second consecutive season the Vancouver Whitecaps lose their Major League Soccer home opener while conceding three goals. This time around they went down 3-2 to the Montreal Impact at BC Place on Sunday afternoon.

To get an insight into what the fans thought about this game I spoke to two of them outside the stadium. So let’s see what Mr. Positive and Mr. Negative had to say about the performance.

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Mr. Positive- The Whitecaps lost their home opener last season and went on to have their best ever MLS campaign. It’s far too early to start panicking.

Mr. Negative– The biggest issue last year was that the Whitecaps just didn’t win enough games at home and losing this one doesn’t bode well for the rest of the season.

Mr. Positive-All the goals were poor from a defensive point of view but there’s no way David Ousted is going to make that kind of mistake again. This was an outlier of a game that tells us nothing about what is to come.

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Mr. Negative-The Whitecaps built their season on defensive solidity last year and if that’s gone then they could be in real trouble. I know you may argue that these were isolated incidents but Montreal looked like scoring every time they went forward and Vancouver were lucky not to concede more than they actually did.

Mr. Positive-Kianz Froese did very well in the central midfield role. He was always willing to get forward and often turned up on the edge of the Montreal penalty area and that’s a huge improvement on the basically static two central midfielders that were a feature last season.

Mr. Negative-I agree that Froese did well but the second Montreal goal wasn’t just about David Ousted and Kendall Waston getting mixed up, it also came about because Froese made a forward run and got dispossessed. That left the kind of space in the centre of the field that the Whitecaps almost never left last season. If the team can’t learn how to play with a more forward thinking central midfielder then they will concede more goals.

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Mr. Positive-The set-pieces were a huge improvement and a goal from a corner and a free-kick sets the team up well for the year as they have at least three players capable of delivering great balls into dangerous areas.

Mr. Negative-Set-piece goals are great, but once again this team showed that it can’t break down an opponent and even though they created a few chances just like last year they kept missing them. By the end of the game Vancouver were reduced to hoping that a “one chance in ten” pass from Pedro Morales was going to strike it lucky and it never did. I’m still not convinced that Carl Robinson knows how to change the flow of a game and I fear that we’ll just see Blas Pérez constantly used as the substitute of choice which simply makes more and more hopeful balls into the box more and more likely. For a team with so many good ball players the Whitecaps really seem to lack an element of guile.

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Mr. Positive-Look it’s one game! Christian Bolaños played well on his debut, Morales looked fit, Rivero was better than he was at any time during the second half of last season and there’s no way the likes of Ousted, Waston, Laba and even Aird play that badly again. Onward to Kansas!

So there we have it, the fans have spoken and they seem to be in two minds about what to make of that game.

Time now then for the all new Soccer Shorts Player Ratings! A subjective and meaningless series of numbers which will hopefully pass thirty seconds of your life in a none too galling fashion (a score of 6 is taken as the average for an MLS player).

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